Who's Up For Best Screenplays?
Who's Winning?
And Who's Been Left Out?
BEST SCREENPLAYS READ THE SCRIPT! WINNER OF BAFTA BEST ADAPTED SCRENPLAY! THE WINNER OF GOLDEN GLOBE BEST SCREENPLAY! SIMON BEAUFOY for Slumdog Millionaire This is Beaufoy's year so far. He has been nominated for all the major screenplay awards, and now, after winning the Critics' Choice for his Slumdog Best Screenplay, he's won the Golden Globe and now The BAFTA for Best Adapted Screenplay. His most famous script was for the massive hit The Full Monty. Slumdog Millionaire picked up Best Picture, Best Director and Best Soundtrack. THE OTHERS WHO WERE NOMINATED: The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button Written by Eric Roth Doubt Written by John Patrick Shanley Frost/Nixon Written by Peter Morgan The Reader Written by David Hare
Screenwriter Simon Beaufoy with Dev Patel and Freida Pinto. Slumdog Millionaire. Director Danny Boyle.Fox Searchlight.
Screenplay awards are always exciting as it's in the award season that screenwriters get to share some of the limelight they so richly deserve and which they rarely get.
BAFTA Winners and Nominations for Best Screenplays
Now that the British Academy Awards appear before the US Academy Awards, the BAFTAs are hotly scrutinized as predictors for the Oscars.Here are the Nominations for Best Original and Best Adapted Screenplay. Winners in bold. ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY Joel Coen/Ethan Coen: Burn After Reading J. Michael Straczynski: Changeling Philippe Claudel: I've Loved You So Long Martin McDonagh: In Bruges* Dustin Lance Black: Milk ADAPTED SCREENPLAY The Curious Case of Benjamin Button: Eric Roth Frost/Nixon: Peter Morgan The Reader: David Hare Revolutionary Road: Justin Haythe Slumdog Millionaire: Simon Beaufoy
If you haven't read Burn After Reading it's available here. Check out how the Coen Brothers 'buried' their serious themes under that great comic wayward plot. It's a skill that Shakespeare used all the time and which the great writers employ. If you want to get your audience to think make them laugh first.
The Coens' trademark thematic irony is really pronounced in this screenplay. And their satire on society's empty values couldn't be more spot-on. I look on Burn After Reading as the flip side of their previous movie No Country For Old Men. Both films are concerned with same theme: a country in moral decline. One's apocalyptic, terrifies us and is darkly comic, the other's broad comedy, makes us laugh and is comically dark.
The Writers' Guild Nominations
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
Burn After Reading
Screenplay by Joel Coen & Ethan Coen, Focus Features
Milk
Screenplay by Dustin Lance Black, Focus Features
Vicky Cristina Barcelona
Screenplay by Woody Allen, The Weinstein Company
The Visitor
Screenplay by Tom McCarthy, Overture Films
The Wrestler
Screenplay by Robert Siegel, Fox Searchlight Pictures
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Screenplay by Eric Roth; Screen Story by Eric Roth and Robin Swicord; Based on the Short Story by F. Scott Fitzgerald, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. Pictures
The Dark Knight
Screenplay by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan; Story by Christopher Nolan & David S. Goyer; Based on Characters Appearing in Comic Books Published by DC Comics; Batman Created by Bob Kane, Warner Bros. Pictures
Doubt
Screenplay by John Patrick Shanley, Based on his Stage Play, Miramax Films
Frost/Nixon
Screenplay by Peter Morgan, Based on his Stage Play, Universal Pictures
Slumdog Millionaire
Screenplay by Simon Beaufoy, Based on the Novel "Q and A" by Vikas Swarup, Fox Searchlight Pictures
Why not read some award-winning and award nominated scripts?
Now is the best time to read the best screenplays of 2008.
If you haven't seen any of the movies yet, you can study the script and imagine how it ended up on the screen then watch it to compare your vision of it. If you've seen the movie already, you'll learn how it was shaped into the film.There is no better way to hone your screenwriting. Watching the movie isn't enough. You have to read the scripts. Studying screenplays needs to be scheduled into your writing life on at least a weekly basis.
Make script reading a habit. Do this and you'll learn more about the art and craft of scriptwriting than any How To book, it will motivate you to aspire to writing the best you can.It's not a question of learning how to imitate a great screenwriter, but more a valuable source of inspiration. What you need to follow is the kind of boldness and inventiveness found in the best screenplays.
Inspired To Take Your Writing
To The Next Level?
Writing a screenplay? Already written one?
If the superb screenplays that are on the Award-givers lists here are inspiring you to take your screenwriting to the next level, you may want expert, caring coverage that's tailor-made for your script.
Make it a screenplay the industry can't resist.
PLEASE NOTE: THE TECHNICAL GLITCH IN THE REPLY TO THIS FORM HAS BEEN SOLVED. SORRY TO ANYONE WHO HAD PROBLEMS WITH IT. ALL IS WORKING OK NOW
Click here to find out more.
Broadcast Film Critics Association
Best Screenplay Winner So we already have some awards results. And there's always much discussion about how they predict the Oscar winners. With Slumdog Millionaire sweeping the Critics' Choice and Golden Globes, it's looking to be a strong Oscar candidate. The Critics' Choice Awards have predicted five out of seven in the Oscars' best picture category - the judges awarded Sideways in 2004, when the best picture at the Academy won Million Dollar Baby and in 2005 they went (correctly, surely?) for Brokeback Mountain instead of the Oscar's Crash.
Best Screenplay: Simon Beaufoy, Slumdog MillionaireThe film also won:
Best Picture
Best Director: Danny Boyle
Best Composer: A.R. Rahman
Best Young Actor/Actress: Dev Patel
Winners in other categories:Best Actor: Sean Penn, Milk
Best Actress: Anne Hathaway, Rachel Getting Married, and Meryl Streep,Doubt
Best Supporting Actor: Heath Ledger, The Dark Knight
Best Supporting Actress: Kate Winslet, The Reader
Best Ensemble: Milk
Best Song: "The Wrestler" by Bruce Springsteen, The Wrestler
Best Action Film: The Dark Knight
Best Comedy Film: Tropic Thunder
Best Animated Film: Wall-E
Best Documentary: Man On Wire
Best Foreign Film: Waltz With Bashir
Interestingly, the film that went into the competition with most nominations - The Curious Case of Benjamin Button - was given nothing.
Look out for more Screenplay Awards News - the Oscars will be next.
Go from Best Screenplays to New and Upcoming Movies
Go to Slumdog Millionaire
Go to The Curious Case of Benjamin Button
Go to Unique Screenwriting Home Page
|
